If someone can bring themselves to do it, more power to them. I, frankly, feel ashamed to pull out my camera and take a picture of "poor" people even when it's not in a tour setting.
The reason for me is simple: if you're not starving/sleeping in the cold, than the only problem with being "poor" becomes one of dignity. And it's amazing how undignified one can feel when someone say "Aw, you pitiable thing! Look at how poor you are! *SNAP*"
But on the other hand, if the people in the slums absolutely hated it--or weren't receiving some kind of kickback--the market really wouldn't exist, would it?
Thanks, JB. I'm with you-- I've got camera issues, period. Doesn't matter whether we're talking about a poor community or a wealthy one. I could put in one album the photos that I've personally taken on 15 years worth of trips.
But the question I was left sitting with at the end of the article is how the slum tours benefit the people who are the object of spectacle. I was fairly convinced by the tourists who were interviewed by Weiner who said that they found the experience of a slum-tour life-changing because it made them cognizant of poverty in a way they hadn't been before. (Now personally I find it hard to imagine that someone could be unaware of poverty, but I also understand that one's frame of reference is shaped dramatically by one's own experiences). In that sense, the povery tours seem "good." Right?
Maybe.
Here's what I see as the problem: I don't think it helps people in the favelas of Rio to sit by passively, allow themselves to be a spectacle, and then get a kick back from a tour operator. Nor do I think that anyone should make a dime off them without them getting a cut. And there lies the rub. Furthermore, I don't think that tour operators with a guilty conscience (or a clean one, if there is such a thing) should assuage their guilt by building a community center and calling it even. Who knows if that's what the community really wants or needs?
What I see lacking--at least in this analysis--is attention to some real grassroots economics issues. (How) can poverty tourism potentially be truly beneficial for favelas and shantytowns?
Hmmm... I guess one concern would be, if these tours ever got big enough that they were actually bringing in serious money, then that would be a dis-incentive to ever de-slummify, since no more slums = no more tourists. I dunno. It seems like what bothers a lot of people is the organized aspect of it - I think people would be much less likely to condemn an independent traveler wandering in to these areas, and I'm not sure that's fair. I think the beneficiality, economically-speaking, of these tours is definitely up for debate, but another thing I think is unfair is the assigning of (nasty) motives to the participants. (I'm thinking here of the woman in the article who said tourists just do it to feel smug, or whatever the exact words were.)
I notice he included Johannesburg's township tours in his list, but didn't interview anyone from that end of things. I never really like the townships being included in this "slum tourism" category, because for me (and from what I've read, for the tour organizers) those tours are as much about the history of Soweto and Alexandria and the rest - their status as THE crucial battlegrounds of the fight against apartheid - as they are about seeing the ongoing poverty. I wouldn't hesitate to take a township tour - it's basically the only way to see the places where some serious history happened.
Eva-
You raise a few interesting issues here, one of which is: How are people going to learn about some "serious history" without access to a place, whether that place is the shantytowns of Soweto or the favelas of Rio? You're right-- these aren't exactly items that are on the usual package tour agenda, and if they are, they're often shined with the gloss of the privileged historical narrative.
Another issue you allude to is what counts as "legitimate" tourism.
I was always fascinated, when I worked as an educational tour director in Puerto Rico, how licensed tour guides would be so quick to point out the beauty of Old San Juan (beauty with an ugly, colonial past-- but that was overlooked or footnoted) but would actively discourage tourists from entering the area of La Perla, a community part of OSJ but located outside the walled part of the city. La Perla is reputed to be (and is) a hot zone of criminal and drug activity, but were the tour guides warning people away solely out of a concern for safety? I rather think that the motive, at least in part (and perhaps entirely unconscious to them), is that they didn't want the "beauty" of the city besmirched by this blemish of reality... which is why it makes La Perla all the more attractive and tempting to visit for a certain segment of tourists.
Great thread, Julie.
I find "slum tourism" a fascinating concept--did quite a bit of research on it last year when I was planning to write an article about it (fizzled out, sad to say). I actually interviewed Chris Way (of the Dharavi tours, mentioned in the NYT piece) and participated in the tour. One thing to note is that a few people have mentioned cameras. The Dharavi tour (like others I've read about) specifically forbids participants to bring cameras or take photos during the tour. When talking to Chris, I also discovered that they had run a few tours to a different slum nearby Dharavi--a far poorer neighborhood--and had stopped tours there because they were getting negative feedback from residents. To me, that suggests that the tour operators were demonstrating sensitivity, but it also proves that there can be a dark side.
I wonder sometimes whether independent travelers walking around in slums is actually worse than organized tours. I've done lots of exploring in very poor neighborhoods (Nairobi, Kampala, all over India, etc) and I think those explorations were in fact much more voyeuristic than the organized slum tour I took in Mumbai. Without a guide, all I could do is look (and very occasionally speak to people who knew English). With a guide, I got a much deeper and richer sense of how people lived--their homes, their families, their work, their aspirations. I felt less like an intruder and more like a welcomed--if sometimes distant--guest. I'd never go on a tour where the operators didn't get permission from the community before bringing foreigners in.
I think it's entirely possible for people to go on slum tours for the wrong reason--to feel smug, to ogle, whatever. But if a tour is done right--working with the community rather than separate from them--then hopefully those people will leave the tour with an entirely different experience than what they'd gone in for.
Jenny-
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences and being so open here. You really took this conversation to a new level by introducing some ideas that Weiner didn't touch on. He probably couldn't have touched on them; as your post demonstrates, so much of what we know depends entirely on lived experience. I really appreciate your post, too, because it takes us beyond the "Is this is a good thing or a bad thing?" and "Are the slum tour operators good guys or bad guys?" frame of reference. Now we're talking!
Amanda over at Vagabondish did a whole series that explored the many facets of Dark Tourism.
Suicide Tourism - http://www.vagabondish.com/suicide-tourism-travel-tours/
Poverty Tourism - http://www.vagabondish.com/poverty-tourism-touring-the-slums-of-india-brazil-and-south-africa/
Disaster Tourism - http://www.vagabondish.com/disaster-tourism-travel-tours/
Grief Tourism - http://www.vagabondish.com/grief-tourism-dark-travel-tours/
Doomsday Tourism - http://www.vagabondish.com/environment-doomsday-tourism-travel-tours/
Dark Tourism (Intro) - http://www.vagabondish.com/dark-tourism-travel-tours/
The Great Dark Tourism Roundup - http://www.vagabondish.com/dark-tourism-round-up/
As a travel photographer, I'm learning more and more each day when to put the camera away....
Joined: 09-14-06
Okay... so if you read my recent review of Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss (http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/02/28/book-review-the-geography-of-bliss/) on BNT, you'll know that I had a beef with what I referred to as Weiner's narrative conceit.
I had a similar beef with his February 3 essay, "My Servant," in The New York Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/magazine/03lives-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Today, Weiner has an article in the Times's travel section: "Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/travel/09heads.html?ref=todayspaper)
and I have to give him some props. This is a well-written article that doesn't tell the reader how or what to think, but offers multiple perspectives about the controversial--and, apparently, growing--niche of poverty tours.
Check it out and let's talk-- what do YOU think about slum tourism?